Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands

[OldBlackDog]

No, 2014 Wasn't The 'Warmest Year In History'

Climate science is still in its infancy. Experts didn't foresee the global cooling that began in the 1940s and didn't anticipate the warming cycle that started in the late 1970s.
Climate science is still in its infancy. Experts didn't foresee the global cooling that began in the 1940s and didn't anticipate the warming cycle that started in the late 1970s.Unless you’ve spent the last few weeks in solitary meditation on a remote island, you couldn’t miss the wave of media stories breathlessly proclaiming that 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history. As usual, the coverage was laced with alarm about the menace posed by climate change, and with disapproval of skeptics who decline to join in the general panic.

Among those seizing on the news to make a political point was President Obama, who used his State of the Union address to voice disdain for those who don’t share his view. “I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists,” he scoffed. “Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But… I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities.”

Well, I’m also not a scientist. But I do know that what NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center actually reported was rather less categorical than what the news accounts – or the White House – might lead you to believe. As both government agencies made clear in their briefing materials, the likelihood that 2014 was the planet’s warmest year is far from a slam-dunk. Indeed, the probability that 2014 set a record is not 99 percent or 95 percent, but less than 50 percent. NOAA’s number-crunchers put the probability at 48 percent; NASA’s analysis came in at 38 percent. The agencies rationalize their attention-getting headline on the grounds that the probabilities were even lower for other candidates for the label of “hottest year in history.”

But other compilers of the standard global temperature datasets have been more circumspect. The report from the UK Met Office noted only that “2014 was one of the warmest years in a record dating back to 1850.” Given the size of the margin of error, it acknowledged, “It’s not possible to definitively say which of several recent years was the warmest.” Similarly, the Berkeley Earth summary of its 2014 calculations explained that last year’s bottom line was statistically identical to other recent years. “Therefore,” it noted candidly, “it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.”

All of which reasonably leads to the conclusion not that the planet has been relentlessly warming, but that the warming trend that peaked at the end of the 1990s has neither resumed nor reversed. Global warming has more or less been on hold since the turn of the 21st century. That hiatus poses something of an inconvenient truth to those who believe that anthropogenic carbon-dioxide is the key driver of climate change, since CO2 emissions have continued without letup.

You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that climate is complicated and hard to get right. Climate models have so far been unable to accurately predict changes in global temperature. Experts didn’t foresee the global cooling that began in the 1940s and didn’t anticipate the warming cycle that started in the late 1970s. Climate science is still in its infancy, and it would be folly to treat any single explanation for changes in global temperatures as impervious to challenge or skepticism.

In fact, the very idea of a “global temperature” is hard to make sense of. How can an entire planet, with its multifarious systems, be said to have a temperature, or even an average temperature?

The latest data reinforces the conclusion not that the planet has been relentlessly warming, but that the warming trend that peaked at the end of the 1990s has neither resumed nor reversed.

Averaging is a familiar and useful concept that we use in a myriad of contexts. Average household income, average life expectancy, average weight of airline passengers, average number of earned runs given up by a pitcher, average daily temperature in Waikiki in April – each is a comprehensible and meaningful statistic. But as the authors of a provocative 2007 paper in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics explain, there are certain kinds of variables that lose all meaning if they are averaged. For example, exchange rates are extremely useful when comparing two currencies. The notion of a “global exchange rate,” however, would be absurd.

Temperatures on the earth are in constant flux. They change with latitude, with time of day, with season, with weather; they vary from ocean depths to atmospheric heights, from the equator to the poles. Even assuming that the necessary raw data could be properly gathered, mathematicians must choose among multiple averaging techniques, which can yield flatly contradictory results.

Physically, there is no such thing as the “global temperature trend,” the authors conclude. Hence, “ranking this or that year as the ‘warmest of the millennium’ is not possible, since other averages will give other results with no grounds for choosing among them.”

As headline fodder, “warmest year ever” may be irresistible. As an unassailable reality on which critical public policy questions should turn? Be skeptical.

 

[OldBlackDog]

They would not lie, would they?

Manufacturing Snow Alarmism At British Columbia's Ski Resorts

The last year has seen the climate alarmists highlight the potential threat of warming temperatures to ski resorts throughout the United States and Canada, with the hysteria being ratcheted up following the NY Times' infamous piece of warmism entitled "The End of Snow?"

The Globe and Mail newspaper -- Canada's equivalent to the NYT -- just published an article on "How B.C.'s [British Columbia's] ski resorts are coping with global warming's threat to their existence." Key to the piece is the following figure:

193988

Here is what the figure purports to show: "trends in average winter temperature and snowfall" between 1901 and 2009 for three major ski resorts in British Columbia. Big White is a ski resort located just east of the city of Kelowna in southern British Columbia. Cypress is located just north of the major metropolitan region of Vancouver, BC, and Whistler is about 120 km (70 miles) north of Vancouver. Cypress Mountain was the freestyle skiing and snowboarding venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics, while Whistler was the alpine skiing venue for these Olympics.

So, we have data on average winter temperatures and snowfall for these three resorts over a 110 year period that purports to show a perfectly linear temperature increase between 1901 and 2009, and a perfectly "wavy" trend in snowfall over this time frame. Since when does climate data follow such beautifully smooth curves and straight lines? Regular readers will know that all climate data has substantial year-to-year variability and cycles. Why didn't the Globe and Mail publish actual (a.k.a., real) climate data?

Moving along, the figure claims that "all data was collected at mid-elevation at the ski resorts." All data? From 1901 through to 2009? Collected at mid-elevation? How is this possible?

According to the website for Big White:

"In 1963 the Serwa's and Mervyn's families started a huge undertaking, creating Big White Ski Hill from scratch. In their first year they had to build a road, a day-lodge and a lift. Imagine trying to build a day-lodge and a lift without the road being completed! The original base area was located approximately where The Aspens is now. In that first year they did successfully complete the road, the day-lodge and the T-Bar. That feat put Big White on the path to becoming what it is today."

The ski resort didn't start getting carved out of the wilderness until 1963, and yet we have accurate winter temperature and snowfall data "at mid-elevation" for the site dating back to 1901?

According to Whistler's website:

"In 1960 a group of Vancouver businessmen, led by Franz Wilhelmsen, formed Garibaldi Lifts Limited with the aim of developing an alpine ski area on London Mountain (across the lake from Rainbow Lodge). Their dream: to host the 1968 Olympic Games. While it would take another 50 years and four Olympic bids before Whistler would realize its Olympic dream, Wilhelmsen and his cohorts pursued their ski area plans with great vigour.

And so it was that London Mountain was soon renamed Whistler Mountain (in honour of a local alpine marmot, who 'whistles' when it communicates) and officially opened to the public in February 1966 at the current Whistler Creekside base."

Whistler didn't open until 1966, and yet -- once again -- we have accurate winter temperature and snowfall data "at mid-elevation" for the site dating back to 1901?

The footnote on the figure indicates this is "un-reviewed data." That raises even more questions.

There are only two climate stations for Whistler in the Environment Canada online climate database. The "Whistler" site is at 658 meters elevation, putting it at the same elevation as the village, and the dataset only starts in December 1976 -- not 1901. The "Whistler Roundhouse" site is at 1,835 meters elevation, which is about mid-elevation for the ski hill, but this dataset doesn't begin until January 1973.

A few years have incomplete monthly temperature and snowfall records during the winter period (December to February) and need to be omitted, but here is the data over what appears to be the entire available time frame from when records begin in 1974 to when they end in 2007.

193989

Good luck reconciling this real data with the figure shown in the Globe and Mail article. Clearly there is not a perfect linear increase in winter temperatures since 1974, and over the last 30 years of the dataset, there is no significant trend.

The winter snowfall data shows a positive correlation towards more snowfall since 1974 and during the last three decades -- with nearly a statistically significant increasing snowfall trend since 1978. Compare this increasing winter snowfall trend using raw Environment Canada data at the site to the purported catastrophic decreasing winter snowfall trend over the same time period shown in the Globe and Mail's article.

The "Cypress Bowl Upper" climate station is at 1210 meters elevation for this ski resort, but the snowfall dataset doesn't begin until 1985 -- not 1901 -- while the temperature dataset does not start until December 1998 (and then it ends in the winter of 2001/2002). You certainly can't do much with a less than four-year long temperature dataset -- and I have no idea how you obtain high-resolution data from 1901 to 2009 from less than four years of data in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Similarly, the snow data at this site is so sparse that only 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002 have complete winter snowfall records. Just four winters in total, and no data whatsoever for 1989 to 1998 and 2003 -- and the dataset ends entirely in April 2004.

The "Cypress Bowl" site is at 930 meters, or about the same elevation as the lodge. Its dataset doesn't start until December 1984, and it ends in late 2001 for temperature data and early 2004 for snowfall. There are only complete average winter temperature records for 15 years between 1985 and 2001, and there is effectively a perfect non-correlation in winter temperatures over this limited time span. Once again, in complete contrast to the claims made in the Globe and Mail article.

Even worse, there are only 14 complete winter snowfall records between 1985 and 2002. The correlation is also towards more snowfall, not less.

There are some other short-term climate stations around the mountain at Cypress, but they only appear to be able to extend the record (if suitable for homogenization with the longer term stations that start in the mid-1980s) out to 2010. Thus, at most, Cypress' climate record appears to go only from the mid-1980s up to recent years, the data record is woefully inadequate, and the data that does exist does not appear to support the claims made in the Globe and Mail article.

The same applies at Whistler. Other short-term stations exist around the mountain, but they do not appear to add to the timeframe before 1973/1974.

Finally, we arrive at Big White. One climate station ("Big White Mtn Lodge") only has some limited data from 1965 to 1968, while the other station ("Big White") has data from 1981 to 1999. Dealing with the best real data at hand, there are nearly perfect non-correlations in average winter temperatures and total winter snowfall from 1981 to 1999. That isn't consistent with what is shown by the Globe and Mail.

We end up with more questions than answers after critically reviewing the Globe and Mail's article on snow alarmism. Good science journalism shouldn't lead to this. Future science journalism articles should always give directions to the raw source data that anyone can download and look at to confirm the claims being made in the media.

At the end of the day, the available data doesn't appear to lead to the same perfectly smooth 110-year climate trends for these ski resorts as the newspaper indicates. Actually, the climate data doesn't tell the same tales at all.

Source

 

[agentaqua]

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/02/0...ce=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=020215

Is Petro-Divestment Too Divisive?
Suncor thinks so, but we say it's crucial to challenging Canada's unfair climate politics.
By Jessica Dempsey and James Rowe, Today, TheTyee.ca

Divest forum
Malkolm Boothroyd from Divest UVic (left) and Steve Douglas from Suncor debate divestment at UVic's forum. Photo by Hugo Wong.

During a recent University of Victoria forum on fossil fuel divestment, Steve Douglas, Investment Relations VP from Suncor, argued that the fight against climate change requires teamwork. He encouraged his company's critics, including Crystal Lameman from the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, to learn from the aerodynamic riding formations used by Tour de France teams: that through teamwork, we can ride a slipstream to a "carbon-lite" future. Stephen Hume from the Vancouver Sun agreed, poetically noting how we are all in the same canoe, and need to begin paddling in unison to outpace disaster. For both Douglas and Hume, the fossil fuel divestment campaign is too divisive, too polarizing.

Douglas and Hume's calls for teamwork are based on a fantastical view of contemporary politics, one where the different players can find common ground through earnest dialogue. We wish this vision of politics were true, but it is not. The great benefit of the fossil fuel divestment movement is that it is reality-based; it reflects the profound asymmetries of power that shape climate politics in Canada.

Not only is Suncor one of the top five political lobbyists in Ottawa, it is also one of the largest members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). CAPP has engaged in direct political lobbying against strong climate policy, as Access to Information request show. CAPP was at the centre of the 2012 omnibus bills that overhauled and eliminated some of the country's most significant environmental laws. Between 2008-2012, CAPP met with the Canadian government 536 times, whereas Canada's largest citizen climate coalition, the Climate Action Network, had six meetings.

We may all be in the same canoe, but oil companies like Suncor have huge paddles that are propelling us towards the precipice of a raging waterfall. Until we name and challenge these power differentials, we won't create the climate policy we need. This is the primary function of the fossil fuel divestment movement. The strategy is to compel culturally and morally powerful institutions like churches, universities, and charitable foundations to publicly remove their investments from an industry whose self-interest threatens the long-term livability of our planet.

Too political?

Let's connect some dots. The University of Victoria owns $4 million in Suncor shares. UVic also owns $20 million worth of fossil fuel companies, which like Suncor, are members of CAPP. In other words, UVic owns a $20 million stake in companies that belong to an industry group that directly advocates against strong carbon policy.



A common refrain from university administrators is that divestment is not aligned with their academic mission; that it is too political. We can only respond with our mouths wide open in wonder. UVic has already taken sides by owning shares in companies that threaten the rights of future generations by obstructing strong climate policy. Fossil fuel divestment reflects a division that already exists: multiple generations of human beings yearning for a bright future, up against an oil industry that wields its power to stall desperately needed government action.

Our collective challenge is significant. In 2012, the International Energy Agency released a report estimating that two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. A recent paper in Nature has specified which reserves need to remain untouched. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of tarsands reserves are unburnable. And yet according to Suncor's 2013 annual report, "the absolute GHG emissions of our company will continue to rise as we pursue a prudent and planned growth strategy." Intensive lobbying efforts will be integral to Suncor's plans for growth since they contradict the biophysical requirements for climatic stability.

Yes, we as consumers also need to change our habits, but it's not regular Canadians who lobby our government to slow climate action. The oil industry has already drawn lines in the sand. The divestment movement simply points those lines out, and encourages institutions with moral courage to step onto the right side of the fight for a livable future.

Righting the canoe

Last week, two UBC researchers and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions released a report arguing that divestment alone is incapable of financing a green economy transition. Yet by focusing on the movement's immediate financial impacts, the report misses the point. The divestment movement's primary goal is to challenge the social license to operate oil companies enjoy, making it harder for them to successfully lobby against needed government action.

This threat is perfectly clear to oil industry analysts. As Geoffrey Morgan, managing editor of Alberta Oil Magazine, recently wrote about the movement: "Energy executives ignore the [divestment] campaign at their own peril; even though [divestment] targets their companies' stock price, its real intention is to erode the hydrocarbon industry's social license to operate."

Investments are not neutral. Institutional investors like UVic, who hold stock in the fossil fuel industry, have chosen sides. But they still have the opportunity to help right the canoe by revoking their support for the obstructionists who would endanger us all to save themselves.

 

[agentaqua]

http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/02/02/F...ce=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=020215


Fracking Quakes Pose Added Risks and Require Study, Expert Warns
Researchers need more seismic data to understand unique hazards.
By Andrew Nikiforuk, Today, TheTyee.ca

Gail Atkinson
Expert Gail Atkinson warns industry-induced quakes can cause more damage than natural ones.

One of Canada's foremost experts on earthquake hazards recently told an audience of Calgary engineers that earthquakes triggered by hydraulic fracturing can exceed "what the natural hazard was in the first place" and pose risks to infrastructure only built to withstand natural earthquake hazards.

As well, earthquakes induced by fracking can produce more damaging ground motion at lower magnitudes than natural quakes due to their shallowness, said Gail Atkinson, the NSERC/TransAlta/Nanometrics Industrial Research Chair in Hazards from Induced Seismicity at Ontario's Western University.

Natural earthquakes have an average depth of 10 kilometres, whereas industry-made tremors are much shallower and closer to the ground surface where people can feel them more strongly.

Natural earthquakes typically cause structural damage in buildings at a magnitude of 5.0, Atkinson said. But earthquakes triggered by fracking could possibly cause damaging ground motions at magnitudes as low as 3.5 to 4.0, due to their shallowness.

Hydraulic fracturing intentionally creates hundreds of microseismic events by cracking deep or shallow hydrocarbon formations with high-fluid injections of water, sand and chemicals. But the technology, which can't yet model where all the fractures will go, has activated faults and slips in Ohio, Oklahoma, England, British Columbia and Alberta, creating headline-making earthquakes in the last three years.

Man-made earthquakes may be "a hot topic now," but they are not a new issue, Atkinson explained.



Since the 1920s, petroleum engineers have set off earthquakes either by fluid extraction or fluid injection. The withdrawal of sour gas from the Strachan pool in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, for example, triggered a swarm of earthquakes in the 1980s by depressurizing the formation. Several quakes rocked the region again last year, the largest of which had a magnitude of 3.9 and caused a power outage in the region.

The extraction of natural gas from the Gronigen field in northern Holland has caused the land to sink, sparking swarms of earthquakes that have damaged thousands of homes in recent years.

Injection and disposal wells, which pump waste or salt water at high pressure deep into the ground, have caused a variety of earthquakes in Colorado, Ohio and Texas by over-pressuring rock and triggering faults.

Fluid injection at geothermal projects, another form of hydraulic fracturing, has also caused significant swarms of earthquakes in California, Australia and Europe.

"What has changed are the rates of induced seismicity. In the last five years, there has been a very noticeable increase in the central United States," said Atkinson.

Oklahoma is now more seismically active than California, as measured by the number of earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 and greater per year, per square kilometre.

One earthquake destroyed 14 homes and injured two people in Prague, Oklahoma in 2011. In 2014, scientists blamed massive high volume wastewater injection wells for the increased seismicity.

Last year, the U.S. Geological Survey warned the state's residents to prepare for "increased hazard." A similar warning has now been issued for North Texas, home to the shale gas and fracking revolution.

Canadian quakes differ

Industry-made earthquakes have also been on the rise in British Columbia and Alberta, but the Canadian experience is different than the U.S. one.

"In the U.S. we are seeing a lot of seismic activity from fluid injection, and in Canada more of the activity seems to be triggered by hydraulic fracturing," Atkinson said during her talk.

Earthquake swarms in B.C.'s Montney shale and Alberta Duvernay shale basin, where industry uses high-volume fracks to crack rock, now likely share the global distinction of generating the largest tremors set off by the technology to date: 4.4 magnitude.

These events have sent U.S. researchers back to look at their seismic data to see if they've missed seismic signals from fracking operations, Atkinson said.

Atkinson cited the recent Fox Creek, Alberta earthquake swarm, almost certainly triggered by the hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells, as an example of "a new seismic source" in the region.

The number of earthquakes in a seismic source follows a well-known distribution in the relative proportion of small to large earthquakes, so that for every 100 magnitude 3.0 earthquakes, we should expect about 10 magnitude 4.0 earthquakes and one magnitude 5.0 earthquake.

Scientists are still investigating whether induced earthquakes follow this same distribution. The events in Fox Creek appear to do so, which is why the recent event of magnitude 4.4 is not entirely surprising.

These man-made events are so much more frequent in a low seismic area such as Fox Creek and most of Alberta that they could challenge the adequacy of current seismic hazard assessments now used to set current building and critical infrastructure codes.

"In low seismic environments like Fox Creek where the natural earthquakes are infrequent, the hazards from an induced seismic event can exceed the hazards from a natural source," warned Atkinson.

Industry doesn't share data

According to Atkinson's preliminary estimate, as many as one in five wells in the Fox Creek region may be triggering seismic activity.

Right now, scientists have no accurate way of predicting whether one-in-five horizontal wells will provoke a felt man-made earthquake, or whether one-in-1,000 wells will do so. The industry simply doesn't know where all the faults are, nor the likelihood of triggering fault movement.

Nor do they know how large or destructive an earthquake trigged by hydraulic fracturing might be. To reduce uncertainty, Atkinson appealed for more seismic data and open access to that data, as well as timely access to operational data.

Many oil and gas companies currently collect their own seismic data, but do not share this information with the public or earthquake scientists.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists working on this issue right now, but if they are not able to see the data, there is no scientific benefit from collecting it," Atkinson said.

In Alberta, two or three years may pass before regulators report on earthquake events caused by the oil and gas industry.

Asked how to improve the industry's public perception, Atkinson recommended that it "stop making statements about what can't happen" with hydraulic fracturing, and instead focus on improving the estimates of likelihood.

Two years ago, industry experts argued that seismic events caused by earthquakes could never be felt at the surface and could never be a nuisance, let alone a hazard.

Scientists made similar claims in the 1960s and 1970s about seismic risks to nuclear power plants and were repeatedly proven wrong in terms of what earthquakes could happen where, added Atkinson.

Atkinson made her presentation to the Canadian Society of Exploration Geophysicists in downtown Calgary on Jan. 29.

A 2012 publication of the organization recognized three years ago that hydraulic fracturing can activate faults and cause significant felt earthquakes with powerful ground motions.

"From the perspective of fault activation, often this is an undesirable consequence of hydraulic stimulation if these faults provide pathways for fluid to escape formation," said the article. "Again, being able to position these faults with respect to the reservoir stimulation is of prime concern. Finally, if these events are generating ground motions large enough to be felt on surface, then there needs to be an assessment of the seismic hazard on site to answer questions about where shaking may be most intense and to what standards equipment needs to be built to withstand such motion."

A recent talk by Usman Ahmed, the vice president of Baker Hughes, a major fracking company, highlighted the chaotic and non-linear nature of cracking shale rocks which are already under high stress.

Ahmed said that 70 per cent of unconventional wells in the U.S., even with fracking, do not met their production targets; that 60 per cent of all fracture stages are ineffective; and that 73 per cent of operators say they do not know enough about the subsurface, let alone where the faults are.

He ended his talk by asking that the industry "avoid faults and geohazards."

 

[agentaqua]

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/02/0...ce=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=020215

Thanks Vancouver Sun, for the 'View from Alberta'
Tankers safe! Protests rude! National Energy Board fair! Save Albertans' asses!
By Rafe Mair, Today, TheTyee.ca

Oil can cartoon
Cartoon by Greg Perry.

It is always so comforting to know that the Vancouver Sun cares enough for us to keep us impartially informed of matters environmental. For example, they've done it for us twice on the same day.

In the Jan. 28 edition, Stephen Ewart provides, we are told, the "View from Alberta" (where else?). A columnist for Postmedia's Calgary Herald, Ewart previously was employed crafting messages for the oil and gas industry. Yet here he seeks to advise those who would stand in the way of the oil and gas industry.

Of course, this is about the protest by the good citizens of Burnaby against the expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. If their fight hadn't had a great deal of impact, energy colossus Kinder Morgan wouldn't be squawking so much through its spokesperson Ali Hounsell, nor would Ewart be dragged from his squirrel cage in Calgary.

But no, this protest was, according to Ewart, a terrible mistake and totally unhelpful to the pipeline opponents' cause. He goes on to whine about protesters shouting at attendees of a Kinder Morgan dinner at a restaurant. Ewart is very offended. Somehow this was an abuse of free speech.

Besides, he lectures, there are "more than enough places to oppose, officially and unofficially, pipelines." Officially? What would that be? Please don't let Ewart be implying the National Energy Board.

The supposed public review of Trans Mountain by the NEB was aptly declared "fraudulent" by former BC Hydro CEO Marc Elisen as he quit his participation in the sham. The proceedings are a waste of taxpayers' money. The fix is in. It is very little more than an industry love-in.



The NEB is worse than useless because it pretends to offer wholly independent assessment, but the very opposite is the case. Most evidence is not admitted. That which is admitted is not subject to cross-examination.

In fact, when it comes to major projects intended to further the gains of oil companies, there is no "official" venue affording an unbiased hearing, no way to be sure there will be an unbiased assessment and an unbiased recommendation by the governments of either B.C. or Canada.

Why we protest

I live on the Sea-to-Sky highway north of West Vancouver. Here the local politicians are doing everything possible to raise issues about the proposed liquefied natural gas plant and pipeline in Squamish. But they simply are not being listened to.

The Squamish council, a brave council indeed, has essentially been told by the federal government that whatever it does is farting against thunder because it has no authority.

This means that authority must rest with the provincial and federal governments.

Those petro-friendly governments, as I've explained many times before, are structurally immune not just to neutered opposition parties but even to critical perspectives by their own backbenchers who dare not defy the party line.

This brings me back to "the view from Alberta" courtesy of Postmedia's former oil patch flack Ewart.

Why does Ewart suppose that the people of Burnaby, and their allies from around B.C., raised so much hell?

Does he not realize they were provoked by a sense that this is a last resort after other democratic avenues have been subverted and rendered farcical?

Perhaps Ewart believes protesting British Colombians are ill-informed and ill-educated.

Does he not realize they have concluded they have no other alternative than to expose themselves and their family to legal penalties including jail?

To dwell upon Ewart's ridiculous article is merely to give credence to those Albertans fuzzy on democracy, the ones who believe they have a constitutional right to sacrifice the environment of neighbouring B.C. in order to sell their toxic tar sands to Asia to make themselves money -- or, as it's turning out, save their asses.

Volunteering for Big Oil

On the same day, the Sun found another pro-pipeline voice living in Vancouver, a beaming young man named Christopher Wilson. What might be his expertise to assure us that tanker traffic is "safer than ever?"

The Sun tells us only that Wilson is an "educator" who "is the B.C. representative for canadaaction.ca, a volunteer movement for Canadians to take action and work together in support of the resource sector."

I went to canadaaction.ca yesterday, Feb. 1, to try and learn about its volunteers and backers, only to read the website is "taking a quick break."

Hmmm. As Wilson extols the virtues of exporting oil through his province from Alberta, he cites the reassurances of the Fraser Institute. Now, of course we all have come to rely upon the Fraser Institute for completely unbiased opinions on matters of this sort. The fact that it has been funded by the bitumen refining, oil tycoon Koch brothers and other entities with ties to fossil fuel corporations is irrelevant. Right.

May I offer a small reality check for Christopher Wilson, who volunteers his time not to protest, but to "support" the aims of the oil industry?

Despite what the Fraser Institute says, all takers are safe until one hits something and spills its cargo into the ocean or along shores. Mathematically, it is a certainty that there will be tanker accidents on our coast if the proposed pipelines go through. A certainty.

Election with much on line

We are in an election year and, as you may have determined, I'm angry. I see people travelling up and down the Sea-to-Sky gazing at Howe Sound, that world-renowned gem. I am desperately concerned that this beautiful place is going to be desecrated for the purpose of fossil fuel shipments to the Far East, and I want to weep.

I open our province's supposed newspaper of record and there, on a single day, are two columns that pretend to tell me I am misplaced in my concerns and should question my solidarity with like-minded protestors.

I cannot accept the implicit message that Prime Minister Stephen Harper really knows what's best for us. The 2015 election is the last chance we have to demand, and seize, the right to decide our own fate

 

[agentaqua]

They would not lie, would they?

Do you even read the stuff you cut and paste OBD??? Look at those graphs you posted AGAIN - or maybe for the 1st time. All show increasing winter temps and decreasing snowfall from 1901 onwards to 2009. I'm not sure why they truncated their graphs in 2009 - since we are 6 years later now - but the data posted does not support the authors assertions - whomever that anonymous blogger is. If you don't even read the stuff you post - why would you expect anyone else to?

 

[GLG]

OBD do not watch this video because this can not happen or may cause you to change your view

[lS1fWUg2oDY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS1fWUg2oDY

 

[GLG]

Another video on how things work with an electric car.
OBD ... don't watch this we can't have you changing your views.
If you did then there would be no one left in BC to let us know what the latest nonsense is.....

[jaWruGLgLlE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaWruGLgLlE

 

[GLG]

They would not lie, would they?

Manufacturing Snow Alarmism At British Columbia's Ski Resorts

Source

Why of course your team lies all the time, what does that make you?

"When it doesn’t snow and it just rains all winter, well then it doesn’t matter what kind of snow-making equipment you have – it’s over."

How B.C.’s ski resorts are coping with global warming's threat to their existence

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...e-coping-with-global-warming/article22731538/

 

[agentaqua]

Gee - I don't know - what makes more sense? Logic, eh? what a concept to the denier gang...

 

[GLG]

Daily Mail journalist David Rose one of OBD's favorite deniers.....
Mail on Sunday on Mar 17 2013

And here’s a close up of that Time magazine cover, note the date in the top right-hand corner, April 1977:

Time Mag website with the covers from April 1977
http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1&Nf=p_date_range|BTWN+19770401+19770430
That's strange .... not there is it....

Here it is... what a minute.....

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]April 2007 and it say's global warming....[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Look's like OBD's team needs photoshop to keep the sheep in order...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]OBD how can this be? I thought you said you had the "truth"[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Oh what a wicked web we weave when our goal is to deceive......[/FONT]

 

[OldBlackDog]

Happy Groundhog Day.

 

[agentaqua]

You know OBD - it's pretty bad that the best defense you can muster is cartoons. Kinda says something about the lack of seriousness of your perspective.

 

[agentaqua]

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/01/28/solar-will-soon-take-base-load-fossil-fuels-says-acwa-ceo/

ACWA CEO: Solar Will Soon Take On Base Load Fossil Fuels
January 28th, 2015 by Giles Parkinson

Originally published on RenewEconomy.

The head of $25 billion Saudi power firm ACWA Power says that the cost of solar technologies are falling so quickly that within a few years the combination of solar PV and solar towers with storage will be able to compete directly with base load fossil fuels.

bolsporrt-590x219Paddy Padmanathan, whose company has 15GW of mostly fossil fueled generation in its portfolio, but is rapidly expanding into solar, says the plunging cost of solar PV, and the dispatchable nature of solar towers with molten storage, make them a compelling option.

“We are looking to integrate solar PV and CSP (concentrated solar power), and then fossil fuel base load head on,” he said in an interview with RenewEconomy this week in Abu Dhabi.

Last week, ACWA stunned the solar industry by winning an expanded tender for a 200MW solar farm in Dubai with a bid of 5.84c/kWh over 25 years. In the first year, the plant will get a tariff of just 5.1c/kWh.

A week earlier, ACWA was also involved in a record low bid for solar towers plus storage, and will build a 100MW plant in Redstone, South Africa, using technology from the US-based Solar Reserve, which is about to complete its first plant in Nevada. The first year tariff for the first year of the South African project is 12.4c/kWh, and it will average out around 15c/kWh over 25 years.

The bidding has stunned rival developers, and one, losing PV tenderer SkyPower, this week publicly questioned – at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi – whether ACWA would actually get a return from the Dubai investment, and whether such prices could be sustained.

Padmanathan insists they can. He predicts the levelled price of solar PV plants will fall to around 4c/kWh within a few years. And he says the pricing of solar towers with storage will fall to around 9c/kWh.

When that happens the combination of ultra cheap solar PV and dispatchable solar thermal will mean solar can compete with base load fossil fuels. They will not just be cheaper than coal and gas, but just as reliable, cleaner, and will lock in a price for 25 years without fuel price volatility.

Padmanathan predicts that solar – a combination of PV and solar thermal and storage – could make up more than half of the 140,000MW that he expects to be built in the Middle East and north Africa region (MENA) over the coming two decades.

“This a big deal. It is not a one off thing,” Padmanathan told RenewEconomy in an interview. “This is completely unsubsidised. It is 20% lower than what has been achieved so far, and 30 per cent below gas fired generation.

“In this part of the world, where there is plenty of land, and a good solar resource, we can compete head on, and like-for-like with fossil fuels.”

Indeed, the numbers being talked about in Abu Dhabi seem so far removed from what is happening in the rest of the world that it appears difficult from those of the large developed economies to comprehend, be they incumbent utilities, renewable energy developers, or policy makers and analysts.

This was a point underlined by Adnan Amin, the director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, who said the price bid by ACWA was a stunning result. “The market is shaken. It was a seismic event,” he told RenewEconomy at a luncheon briefing on Wednesday.

“What it actually shows that if you get the business model right, you can lower your transaction costs, you can source the right kind of technology, and the excellent solar resource in Abu Dhabi means you can lower your costs substantially.”

Amin said European companies could manage the same cost reductions, but needed to change their mindset. They were working in over-supplied markets, but needed to structure themselves to address the challenges of emerging markets, where demand was growing strongly.

He said it underlined the fundamental transformation that was taking place in the energy markets, and with the growing discussion in leading financing circles of stranded assets and divestment were heralding more seismic events.

This was being accentuated by the plunge in oil price, which was making many reserves and production uneconomic. “We are just waiting to see which is the first oil major to get out of hydro-carbons”.

As for those who question the idea of cost parity between renewables and fossil fuels, Amin said: “If they think that, then they need to wake up and smell the coffee.”

Amin pointed to wind in Brazil, offshore wind in Denmark, South Africa, wind and solar in Mexico, wind and solar in Chile,. “The biggest fastest growing energy consumers are delivering very low prices. I wouldn’t underestimate the incumbent industry. They have some very smart people. It’s just a question of what they re going to do about it.”

Padmanathan explains that ACWA was able to reach 5.84c/kWh in the Dubai tender because the cost of financing was below 4 per cent. And while most projects get 80 per cent debt, and 20 per cent equity, this project got finance for 86 per cent of the project, while more expensive equity took just 14 per cent.

The significant of this is that it is 2/3 the price of gas fired generation that dominates in this part of the world. “It completely changes the mindset, and it completely changes the economics,’ he said.

And Padmanathan thinks it can go lower – to 4c/kWh within “four to five years”, as the cost of finance continues to fall, and gains are made on solar cell and module efficiency, and operating costs.

While most of the focus was on the solar PV tender, Padmanathan is equally excited about the solar tower tender result. “To me equally exciting, or an even more exciting opportunity. It will deliver fully dispatchable power, day and night. We can follow the load curve.”

He noted that the 12.4c/kWh tariff for the first year is less than half the tariff for CSP (concentrated solar power) demanded just three years ago. Over the 25-year period, the average price is 15c/kWh, but this is half the cost of CSP just three years ago. He says it can go down to 9c/kWh as more solar towers with storage are rolled out.

The combination of PV and CSP, he says, will be irresistible. “That is fixed price for 20 years, or so — 9c/kWh, fully dispatch able, following the load curve during the day, and producing at night. That is the same cost as fossil fuels, and you don’t have to suffer chronic fuel price volatility.”

ACWA is investing in a series of other solar thermal projects. It owns the Bokpoort project in South Africa, which will be 50MW of parabolic trough with 9 hours of thermal storage, and it is building three plants at the Ouarzazate project in Morocco, also known as Noor.

Noor is a 160MW parabolic trough installation with 3 hours storage, generation capacity of 160 MW with 3 hours of thermal energy storage.

“We are taking advantage of the lessons learned in German and Spain, who led this,” Padmanathan says. “They have contributed significantly, they brought down the price of PV, and helping to bring down the price of CSP.

“All we are doing is benefit from that. We are able to give it scale, and give it a vision. I think 2014 and 2015 – in a decade’s time, we willl see these years as a tipping point.”

(Note, all $A and $US)

Reprinted with permission.

 

[agentaqua]

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ller-heirs-divest-fossil-fuels-climate-change

Heirs to Rockefeller oil fortune divest from fossil fuels over climate change

Peter O’Neill, head of the Rockefeller family and great-great-grandson of John D Rockefeller, along with Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (second from the right_, great-granddaughter of of John D. Rockefeller, and Stephen B Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Suzanne Goldenberg in New York
@suzyji
Monday 22 September 2014 17.19 BST

The heirs to the fabled Rockefeller oil fortune withdrew their funds from fossil fuel investments on Monday, lending a symbolic boost to a $50bn divestment campaign ahead of a United Nations summit on climate change.

The former vice-president, Al Gore, will present the divestment commitments to world leaders, making the case that investments in oil and coal have an uncertain future.

With Monday’s announcement, more than 800 global investors – including foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers, religious groups, healthcare organisations, cities and universities – have pledged to withdraw a total of $50bn from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund controls about $860m in assets, said Beth Dorsey, the chief executive of the Wallace Global Fund and the Divest-Invest movement, which has led the divestment campaign. About 7% are invested in fossil fuels.

But the Rockefellers’ decision to cut their ties with oil lends the divestment campaign huge symbolic importance because of their family history. The divestment move also helps bring a campaign launched by scrappy activists on college campuses into the financial mainstream.

But for oil, there may not have been a Rockefeller fortune. John and William Rockefeller were the co-founders of the Standard Oil Company, which at the time operated the world’s biggest refineries, and overtime spawned Exxon, Amoco and Chevron.

Now, after a year of deliberations, the descendants of those original Rockefellers had decided the time had come to move away from oil.

“John D Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, moved America out of whale oil and into petroleum,” Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, said in a statement. “We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.”

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In addition to the Rockefellers, the World Council of Churches, which represents some 590 million people in 150 countries – also pulled its investments from fossil fuels on Monday. The move represented a turning point for a movement which began by demanding that universities purge their financial holdings of ties to the fossil fuel industry.

About 30 cities have also chosen to divest, including Santa Monica and Seattle.

“When you have the Rockefellers and the World Council of Churches and institutions with global reach coming together and divesting, then this movement which began just three short years ago has really reached a significant turning point,” Dorsey said.

In that time, supporters such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu have framed divestment from fossil fuels as a moral imperative – like the anti-apartheid movement of a generation ago.

“Climate change is the human rights challenge of our time. We can no longer continue feeding our addiction to fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow, for there will be no tomorrow,” Tutu said in a video address.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund over the years has been a big supporter of environmental causes, including to campaign groups opposed to fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline, which made for an awkward fit at times with its continued investment in oil and gas. The family plans to first divest from tar sands commitments.

A number of universities have also started to cut their ties with fossil fuel – with Stanford University dropping coal holdings from its $18bn endowment.

But divestment remains a hard sell. The University of California system said last week it would continue to hold on to fossil fuels. Harvard University has also resisted pressure from faculty and students to divest – although Yale has said it will look into whether renewable energy offers a better bet in the long run.

“In the last great divestment campaign, Harvard said no before it said yes. I think it’s just a matter of time,” Dorsey said. “Unlike with the anti-apartheid movement, this is not just an ethical issue. There is a powerful financial reason as well.”

 

[OldBlackDog]

Here is the article you quoted. I see nothing you are showing? Photoshopping are they??

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html

Daily Mail journalist David Rose one of OBD's favorite deniers.....
Mail on Sunday on Mar 17 2013

And here’s a close up of that Time magazine cover, note the date in the top right-hand corner, April 1977:

Time Mag website with the covers from April 1977
http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1&Nf=p_date_range|BTWN+19770401+19770430
That's strange .... not there is it....

Here it is... what a minute.....

[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]April 2007 and it say's global warming....[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Look's like OBD's team needs photoshop to keep the sheep in order...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]OBD how can this be? I thought you said you had the "truth"[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]Oh what a wicked web we weave when our goal is to deceive......[/FONT]

 

[agentaqua]

You don't see the photoshop, OBD - or don't want to...

 

[OldBlackDog]

They pretty well say it all, don't they.

You know OBD - it's pretty bad that the best defense you can muster is cartoons. Kinda says something about the lack of seriousness of your perspective.

 

[GLG]

Here is the article you quoted. I see nothing you are showing? Photoshopping are they??

Of course you can not see how David Rose changed the Time Mag cover from 2007 on global warming to 1977 global cooling.
You are not programmed to see that. It makes no sense when you lose your critical thinking skills.

 

[GLG]

They pretty well say it all, don't they.

Yes it does..... when you use the science of "looking out the window"